Tips Tuesday – Monetizing Your Passion, Site Security HOAs

Hello Happy Site Owners! This week we’re going to have a site success, me and you chat, all about monetizing your passion, and why some folks do well with that and others don’t. Plus, insights and examples of some of the clients I work with that will apply to your business model too. And, I’ll be participating in two important Hangouts on Air dealing with site security. One for DDoS attacks and the other on SSL certificates. So, let’s dive in. Listen to the podcast.

The wonderful folks at +Black Lotus create some great reports on DDoS and Cybersecurity and +Jerry Whitehead has invited me to chat with him about this super important topic affecting sites and the whole Internet right now.

And we’re so happy to have the always delightful +Mia Voss as our host. And there are some other very cool folks involved in this production including +Dustin W. Stout who created all of the graphics, and +Jeff Sieh who made the nice video trailer. So, I’m pretty stoked to be part of this all-star team of folks who produce super quality work.

The event is live at 1:00 pm CDT, which is 2:00 EDT and 11:00 PDT.

We’re going to break down DDoS attacks into non geek speak and tell you how this type of attack negatively impacts a site even if it’s not hacked.

Contact Form

Y’all know that I’ve been getting up to speed with my new back office setup on Google Apps for the past few weeks. Well, to my horror, I discovered that email results from my contact form were not making it through. It was an easy fix through cPanel at the host, to change the MX record setting there to external email, instead of where I had them going through the hosting.

So, if you’ve contacted me in the last couple of weeks and not heard back from me, please do contact me again and I’ll be sure to answer quickly.

And, contact form plugins do malfunction now and then too, so be sure to check that your form is working once in a while as well.

Site Success Classes

Busy season for me starts ramping up this time of year and goes big guns from October through March. It’s the same with most everyone in the site building industry. That’s just when folks like to do site revamps.

So, if you’re thinking about:

a makeover for your site

or you’ve been spinning your wheels with try-this-try-that and you’re ready to get some traction

or you want to take your site and your business up another notch

then it’s time to get that project locked in on the calendar.

Training class prices are going up slightly in October. So, now is the time to book, even if you want to start later.

And, I always have a chat with folks first, to ensure that we are a good fit and to learn more about their goals and ensure that what I offer is a good fit for them too. I invest myself in your success and my first goal is to help set you on a path to make the money you spent back as quickly as possible.

Now, while all of that sounds impressive, I never made a business out of any of them, thus I never made much money either. And now you know why I kept a day job as an electronics engineer for 30 years.

And when I decided to go full-time with BlogAid, I was working two full time jobs for a while. That didn’t leave much, if any time for my hobbies.

So now that I’m down to one full-time job, I’m ready to dive back into carving, which I usually enjoy doing most during the fall and winter months.

But my website for it is an old static HTML site, that has blog posts from Blogger embedded in it. I’ve been wanting to update it for years, but didn’t have the time, and it hasn’t been a security issue, so I left it.

Well, I started on the redesign this summer and sweat every little detail and got nowhere fast. So now, I’ve turned it over to my favorite designer, +Cyndi Papia who is keeping it hidden from me until it’s done. There will be zero input from me. I’ll let you know when it’s ready to show.

Monetize Your Passion

And on that note, I want to let you in on the type of client projects I’ve been working with recently, and why you may or may not want to try to monetize what you dearly love to do.

My dad’s whole family were professional musicians playing behind folks like Elvis, and naturally I did go into the music business for several years. Doing so nearly ruined the joy of playing and writing music for me. So I got out of it.

I see a lot of posts about making a business out of what you love. For some folks, that ends up feeling like they’re prostituting their children and it never works.

I also remember hearing an interview with John Saddington about why he never monetizes anything he truly loves. He only monetizes things he really likes. He’s been a very successful serial entrepreneur and is behind several big name things you’ve heard about, although you may not see them on his resume.

I’m at that place with BlogAid. I truly enjoy everything about the work that I do and I’m over the moon about all of the folks I get to be involved with as clients and in my network.

But, my passions run toward art and science and creative endeavors, and those are not things that I want to try to make a living from because of the change that has to happen to be in business with them.

I will be monetizing my carving site at some point, but I’m going to do it a very specific way so that it is hobby income that helps me pay for the hobby, beyond just selling the carvings themselves. I actually won’t be selling most of what I create this season.

And some folks, especially the more creative types, just don’t have a business mindset. I know it took me years to develop it, and I had help with that along the way.

Selling Art

I’ll give you an example. I know an artist that teaches her techniques for creating beautiful Chinese paintings. She has over a million views on her YouTube video tutorials. But she can’t sell a painting. So, obviously she’s doing something right to get that kind of viewership. She’s just monetizing the wrong thing. It’s a business mindset that’s missing. A good mentor or coach could help with that.

Selling an Experience

I have another client that is actively engaged in a profession that is so exciting that it’s contagious. A month or so ago when I even mentioned on a G+ post how excited I was to work with him, that post got tons of engagement and +1s. But, figuring out how to translate the real-life, experiential nature of what he does into something that can be monetized online is a real trick and we’re still working on it. We’ve switched gears into not monetizing right away and instead just building tribe, which should go very, very quickly for him. And will give him time and opportunity, and the necessary feedback, to see what gets traction and where this could go.

Selling Coaching

I have another client that is an awesome running coach. Running is practically her life. She has a couple of super popular podcasts on it, one for beginners and another for advanced runners, and is now capitalizing on that popularity by expanding it into a membership site. She has sponsors beating down her door for the podcast already, and that will only increase with the membership site.

Selling Organization

I have another client who is a master organizer and helps folks de-clutter. It’s not just about the stuff, it’s about the mindset and habits too. So, it’s very personalized work. Her site serves as an information repository and a way to connect with her audience.

Selling Convenience

I have another client who is a lawyer. And he knows how busy folks in that profession are. He’s got a four month goal of making himself the go-to guy for convenience of what folks in that profession need to know to do their jobs well. While he’s at it, he’s also building his authority on the topic with Google. And then he’ll be in a position to have the audience to sell his member site offerings to early next year.

The Business of How To

Basically, all of these clients, and even BlogAid and my carving site, are in the how-to business. There’s a definitely path to monetization with that.

No matter what you offer, there is going to be some type of how-to component in it. Sometimes that’s in the form of education. You have expertise in your field. Sharing that knowledge in a way that folks can actuate is a formula for a business.

But, you have to be careful that making that transition, from knowing and doing, to selling that information, or creating a product to sell from it, doesn’t ruin the very reason why you enjoy what you do in the first place.

Following What You Like

And sometimes, you’ll need to be like a leaf on a tree and branch out where the sun is shining. That’s what happened to BlogAid this year. I became very interested in site performance, and that necessarily led to the role site security played in it.

I never meant to make site security a big thing in my business. But I want you to take notice of the two HOAs I’m participating in today. They both involve site security.

Joni and Mike

Joni Mitchel considers herself foremost as a painter. In fact, she took singing gigs to pay for painting supplies. I wonder how much her paintings would be worth if she didn’t have all of those Grammys sitting on her mantle.

When folks mention Michelangelo, the first thing that comes to mind is the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In fact, painter is the first thing listed in his biography. But he thought of himself first and foremost as a sculptor.

Sometimes, being in business means that you have to follow the money, not just your passion.

And I’m free and nimble enough in BlogAid to do that and make good business decisions.

Wrap Up

I hope the tips and examples in today’s podcast have given you food for thought on what it takes to have a successful business online. It’s great to enjoy what you do, and passion can help you get through tough business times and changes and keep moving forward. But it can also be a sticking point all by itself and keep you from growing the way you need to.

It’s not all about having the best site design that’s fully secure and performing at peak, or about the latest social media gimmick.

More than anything, it’s about developing the mindset that will help you make a profitable business out of what you do. Coaches are great for helping you develop that mindset. But at some point, the rubber has to meet the road and you’re going to have to actuate that plan. That’s what I’m living and what I help folks do.

So, if you’re past the point of being a tip collector, and you’re ready to get this thing in motion with some traction, and have confidence that you know what you’re doing and why, come on over to BlogAid and get started.

Right there at the top of the home page you’ll find resources for where you are in your journey, whether that’s just getting started, or going up a notch, or you’re already a busy entrepreneur and are ready for someone to be in your tech corner, helping your business grow.

About MaAnna Stephenson

MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English and helps non-geeks create sites that get noticed by search engines and readers, are secure, plus convert, and perform well.Connect with MaAnna online

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Hi! I'm MaAnna, and I'm a geek who can still speak in plain English. I help non-geeks become confident, successful owners of sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers. How May I Help You?